6 Reasons Why You’re Failing at Social Media

This factor isn’t number one by accident: it’s the most common reason people fail at social media. If you don’t take time to learn about and understand the audience you are trying to connect with, the attempts you make are going to be completely futile. You need to identify the target audience you want to reach, and then start researching how others are successfully interacting with that specific demographic.

You’re Not Being Creative

Succeeding at social media isn’t rocket science, but it does require one thing: creativity. People who are consistently successful with different forms of social media put a lot of time and effort into coming up with creative ideas. So, if you want to see results from your social media activities, you need to create pieces of content that people are actually going to care about.

You Talk About Yourself

If you want to talk about yourself, start a diary. If you want to be successful at social media, talk about things other than yourself. As Hugh MacLeod recently said:

“What’s true in life is also true in marketing: If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about other people.”

So, the next time you sit down at your keyboard to start writing a piece of content, feel free to write about anything but yourself!

You’re Shouting Instead of Talking

When it comes to social media, if you try to jam something commercial down people’s throats, they are going to instantly reject you. Instead of shouting at people, you need to engage in a conversation with them. Rather than spending your time trying to find a huge audience to shout at (spamming), take the time to actually engage in conversations and develop relationships with individuals or small groups. While the first approach is tempting because it seems easier, it will inevitably fail! Investing your time in creating relationships will have a much bigger payoff in the end.

You Give Up Too Easily

You’re not going to succeed 100% of the time with social media!

You’re not going to succeed 100% of the time with social media!

I wrote that twice because the sooner you except it, the easier your life is going to be. Sometimes, you will put a lot of time and effort into an idea you think is great, and it will simply flop. At that point, if you give up, then you won’t ever succeed. However, if you chalk up your failures as learning experiences and move on to your next idea, you will eventually find things that work.

One of my favorite examples of this is Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. He’s been producing great content for quite awhile. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, most of it was never very successful in attracting huge amounts of links or traffic. However, as the graph above shows, he kept trying one thing after another, and he eventually found something that has been working quite well for him.

You’re Using Multiple Accounts

Social media algorithms aren’t stupid, and neither are people. If you’re using multiple accounts to cast votes for your own stories or leave lots of positive comments (spamming), sites and users are going to catch on quite quickly. As I’ve mentioned with several of the other points, instead of spending the time it takes to create multiple e-mail addresses so you can create multiple accounts, why don’t you just use that same amount of time to come up with an idea that will spread on its own?